Thanks for the great ideas! I’ve gone a more rudimentary, unwieldy, and not-so-artistic route but am mostly satisfied with it, though it’s a bit unwieldy.

I’ve used one of the cardboard boxes the Wild Gears ship in and used putty to adhere the gears to the inside of the box, arranged by size and labeled. I can fit the Full, Compact, and Strange Shapes gear sets on the large panel of the box and one of the two side flaps (except for the large gear set frames).

I like to be able to see everything at a glance, particularly when creating designs using a wheel within a wheel. That way I can see the size of the gear cutouts within the larger wheels. Keep the good ideas coming!

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

The post Another Wild Gears Storage Idea appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

I was thinking some more about storage for the larger gears and rings and had a brainstorm. Here is the result.

I considered making something similar but this was less than $8 on Amazon and I figured even my time in retirement is worth more than that, so I bought it almost fully assembled. There are two minor issues. The large rings don’t stand properly in the back. The posts come up inside the ring. I had to put my largest gear as the rearmost item to give them something to lean against. Putting a heavy duty paper plate or maybe a light plastic one in the back would accomplish the same thing and is probably a better solution since it can be left there permanently.

The other issue is the smallest gear that fits properly is about 100 teeth. Anything smaller than that doesn’t rest on the side rails, and anything much smaller will fall right through. The rack ships as four pieces, with the cross dowels that hold it together needing to be fitted. As such, they could be shortened, pulling the side rails closer together and allowing smaller gears to be stored. I may cut an inch or so off of them and see how many more gears it will hold then.

I just now got this rack and haven’t used it while drawing yet, so I can’t say how well it will work in practice. I do know you don’t want to just cram in as many gears as will fit between the posts. There needs to be room to separate them so you can flip to the one you want. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be terrible to just lift out the whole group, find the one you want, and put the rest back. That would still be a lot faster than flipping through the CD case or digging through a box. Ten gears will fit between each set of posts.

Here is the bamboo dish rack on Amazon (affiliate link). They are inexpensive.

Anyone else try something like this? Let us know in the comments.

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

The post Storing Wild Gears 2: by Jay Heyl appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

Here are some great ideas with photos from reader Jay Heyl.

For the gears too big to fit in the CD case and for all the rings I use a plastic project box. I didn’t take any pictures of that because it’s nothing special. They’re available all over the place and it’s just a plastic box into which I toss the rings and larger gears. The project box works better for holding old drawings than for holding the gears and rings. I do also have a heavy poly bag with a slide closure top, kind of like a plastic money bag, that I use for the small and medium rings. That also goes in the project box.

I originally thought it would be important to keep my storage solution potentially mobile, but in over a year they haven’t moved more than ten feet so I’m now thinking more along the lines of something a bit more permanent where the gears each have a place within easy reach. No matter what I do with the larger gears I will continue to use the micro utility box. I almost always close it as soon as I remove what I need so gears won’t go flying if I happen to bump it off the drawing table.

~ Jay Heyl

[Much thanks to Jay for the ideas and photos. Shop Wild Gears at this link. ~ Ed.]

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